ballnine - BULLDOZING A ROAD BLOCK

By Kevin Kernan September 12, 2020

Minor league life is tough. Having no minor leagues this summer was tougher.

This is not only the survival of the fittest, it is the survival of the most creative.

Imagine being a young player on the rise, looking to gain a pivotal year of experience as you climb the minor league ladder in hopes of getting to the major leagues one day.

Imagine doing this as a submarine pitcher, one of the most unique skills in baseball.

Then the ladder is taken away.

What to do now?

How does a minor leaguer survive and prosper when there are no minor leagues? Here at BallNine we search hard for baseball answers and bring real life experiences home.

Where does a minor leaguer go when there is nowhere to go?

What happens to the journey when the road is blocked by Covid?

Here is how one minor league pitcher is dealing with a career detour no one could have anticipated.

His name is Josh Hejka.

He is 23, a right-handed submarine pitcher, who put up eye-popping numbers in 2019 for two Mets rookie league teams, Kingsport and Brooklyn.

Over 22 appearances Hejka posted a 1.33 ERA as a reliever, compiling four saves. He did not allow a home run. He walked five and struck out 24. He held right-handed batters to a .200 average. Lefties hit just .226 against him. All this after being signed out of an Independent League after a college career at D-III Johns Hopkins University that culminated in a College World Series appearance in 2019.

Hejka owns a degree in computer science and understands the analytical game better than most. Just to get this far is an accomplishment, and Hejka is not about to be derailed now. The bigger the challenge, the deeper he digs in. Perseverance is the word.

“This is clearly an unprecedented time for everyone in the minor leagues especially,’’ Hejka told BallNine. “This is the first time in my life where the traditional schedule, having a season, then having an off-season and then coming back and playing the next season has been disrupted.

“I worked really hard this off-season and was excited to show what I had improved on and the gains that I made, and we got to spring training and we were only there for a week. I got put into the offseason right away.

“IT IS REALLY EASY TO FALL INTO PARALYSIS BY ANALYSIS.”

“This summer I tried to reframe it. It would be really easy to say, ‘Oh this sucks,’ and sit around and not do anything for a few months and then wait for them to tell us what we are doing and get started again.’’

That’s not the way Josh Hejka approaches challenges.

This is someone who made himself into a submarine pitcher in high school, then worked hard to find a place to pitch in college and made the most of that opportunity, academically and on the mound.

“This sucks right now,’’ he said of having no season, nowhere to play, “but it could be, looking back, that I will be grateful to have this time to work on certain goals.

“This year would have been a really big year for me in terms of proving myself in the organization as a prospect. I thought it was an opportunity to reframe it to continue to get better, figure out my strengths and weaknesses.

“How do I play to my strengths more? How do I improve my weaknesses and really take advantage of this time that we have? I think this time was valuable in that I could continue to get better.’’

How did Hejka improve with no minor league baseball?

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